Bloblobber: You Love to Hate It

[Kuwata]

As the title suggests, this is a thread about Bloblobber and using both Bloblobber kit variants in a competitive setting.

Much to my regret(?), I discovered that I’m actually a competent blob player. I’m certainly not the best - but I wholly enjoy studying high level blob players in Splatoon. Yes, that’s right, all 3 high level blob players that haven’t totally switched to pencil yet

I think Bloblobber is seriously fun with some time and exploiting its strongest points. There’s something immensely satisfying about angling someone out or reading them insanely hard with this weapon. Woe, 30 damage from high ground be upon ye! Good luck capping that zone! I actually reached my peak X power with the weapon, yet I call myself a Splatling main. I hope to become better at Deco blob, it’s such a quirky weapon!

Personally, I stole IsaacTaken’s LDE vblob build, it’s like you absolutely never run out of ink to constantly rain down chip damage and contest zone or map control. However, I begrudgingly find myself using the damned Thermal Ink for it in solo queue, where I don’t have teammates that I can reliably callout who I chipped or not. What are your guys bloblobber builds?

Let’s discuss Bloblobber and how to have lots of fun and learn more from each other with it :)

 

[Kuwata]

I’m trying to summon the 38832748 unnamed Bloblobber mains. It isn’t working. So, I’ll begin writing this as a sort of trial and error thing with Blob… I have had the most experience so far with vBlob, so this post will mostly pertain to that.

• Blob can threaten chip damage anywhere, especially when it has high ground.

Blob has the corny property of being able to rain down random pellets of 30 damage everywhere, especially on modes like Splat Zones. A fraction of game sense and predictive skills allows you to arc shots in the general direction of where you think people are coming from and reap huge value from it - whether you chip them or splat them outright. Even if you don’t kill them, Blob asserts enough uncomfortability on the other team that they may have to pick a different route or end up getting cheesed.

• Blob can threaten chip damage anywhere, so it has to stay alive and in control. Its teammates help it shine - and vice versa.

I noticed this in high-level blob gameplay, again, referencing IsaacTaken from HELLER. Isaac plays Blob in a way that prioritizes his life above everything else, and he notably tries to keep deaths to 1-2 or LESS during Zones games. Being able to call out that you chipped someone in a certain area can help your teammates finish them off, given you have voice chat capabilities and all that. Additionally, being observant of your teammates positions and what they’re doing is rewarded quite well with Bloblobber. If you see a teammate entering a fight situation, send a few blobs their way! The chip and paint helps. The new Inkstorm buffs make teamfighting with the support of a blob more interesting, too.

• Fighting Blob is annoying, so stay annoying and unfair as possible.

Dying with blob is a big no-no. You basically lose your infinite paintbotting abilities, safe Super Jump spot, and all the pressure that it can exert with its stupid bubbles bouncing around everywhere. Your death means a window of opportunity for them to wreak havoc on your havoc you just wreaked (?). Your goal is to be annoying and overpaint and threaten damage and enable enable enable your team to victory.

Blob can trade in death. Blob can somewhat efficiently defend itself when jumped. I’ve seen a strategy where you place a sprinkler in front of you during a close quarters fight in order to give you somewhat of a pseudo-shield. I gotta try that out!

I’m still sleepy while writing this, so I’ll probably edit this post with more observations as they come.

 

[paks]

Thanks for this. I'm a fellow blob main. I fell in love with the weapon after maining short-range shooters for the whole rest of my splatoon career. I agree with all your main points about blob's strengths and how to leverage them in a match.

Questions that arise for me:

• You discuss the imperative of staying alive. That suggests a traditional "backliner" approach. But one of blob's strengths is its ability to be annoying in non-backliner positions. I see some aggro blobs out there being annoying from pretty far forward, and personally I enjoy ducking under ledges to play it like a bucket. I notice you avoided the front/mid/back role characterizations -- how do you feel about them, and how blob fits into them?
• Do you think blob fits into the approach of "fighting pairs"? To me there's nothing like a blob to be able to take an off-angle on a fight that your teammate is in, but also the slowness of the blobs might play into that, plus how does that jibe with providing paint, specials, and jumps by staying alive?
• A blob player I know and respect recently told me that they think of blob doing best as a mid-liner with 3 frontliners. On my team it's me (the de facto backliner), a support player (nzap) and a fighting pair (ttek, sword, 52-gal, etc.). I'm wondering how you see blob fitting in with the slayer/skirmisher/support framework as well. So basically, your thoughts on team comp.

Thanks for this post, I hope we get a vigorous blob discussion (blobcussion) going here!

 

[Kuwata]

(cut)

Yay, another unnamed blob player! Thank you for your inputs and thoughts on playing this weapon. Blob fulfills many weird little roles from time to time for sure, but I think that playing aggressive blob will ultimately depend on your team's compositions and goals.

I will answer your bullet points with my thoughts in sequential bullet points as well :3

1. Blob takes somewhat of a support approach - in the way that I'd consider greyzap or hedit to be. It's not necessarily entirely immobile, but it can't exert the IDENTICAL pressure that, say, an E-Liter does. It takes advantage of its angling and ability to paint like crazy in order to enable its teammates. If it is given the opportunity, it can go for ledge plays or other similarly annoying Slosher positions. I like that it has this flexibility - given it already has established enough paint control over a certain area, it can afford to push up and make riskier plays. I do not like placing blob into front/back/midline roles since I think that it's in a weird spot between all of them. Of course, I personally am not an aggro blob player but I do find myself taking a midline position if I notice I've been placed with another traditional backline in soloqueue.
2. Blob excels when its teammates are extremely aggressive and can capitalize on the chip damage and ability to jump to you as a sort of pseudo-anchor. I love taking off-angles, but it has to be done in a balancing act where you are sure that your teammates will still have someone to rely on for chip and paint. Blob is too slow to, say, run up the enemy ramp in Brinewater, but can have a hell of a time supporting its teammates by arcing over the ramp and helping chip for its teammates to push up. You basically have to be extremely observant of your teammates tendencies and be able to support their fights from reasonable safety.
3. I find myself agreeing with that, but again, it can depend on the map mode! On Zones I'm almost always taking a backline-esque role, but again, the pacing of your teammates and game state can affect what kind of position you're taking. I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to scrim with Blob as it's still seen as a throw/noob weapon but I don't really care and will end up using it soon. We can reference Isaac's games with Blob in SendouQ:
   https://x.com/Isaac_taken/status/1743765206952558780?s=20
   He died once, threw out 10 rains, and his teammates ran in and fought like crazy and were able to reliably come back thanks to cooler + jumps to blob. He was setting his team up for success by being able to confirm paint and safe anchoring spots - a blob that doesn't die makes it impossible to claim Zone.
   
   I even have a screenshot from my solo queue games that reflects a similar outcome:
   
   
   
   You can see I threw out 7 rains, got 10 assists, and died a total of 2 times. Even though the enemy team fragged out, they were unable to overpaint my team which has an arguably worse paint output. I understood that my teammates had to be enabled off of me and decided to take an anchor role off of that - and we ended up winning the game!

 

[paks]

I'm so stoked about rain buff. What I'm starting to work on with my team is calling out "rain in 5" to allow them to get ready to push with it. That also requires me to be more cognizant of teammate position (this is a plus because I need to actively work on it, and now if I do, my special contributes better to the team).

Let's talk other modes. As that backliner or support player, my team needs me to be on the tower or carry the rainmaker. I think the tower riding is challenging with blob because it's less able to defend itself than a shooter, bucket, brush etc. (though it has far more self-defense ability than a charger). Intrigued by your sprinkler mini-wall idea, that could work on tower. I would definitely like to do more with sprinkler than (a) charge special and (b) toss it inside the rainmaker shield as it's spawning.

I find that blasters and brushes counter blob most effectively. What counterplays do you find are most troublesome in your blob play?